This morning, Eddie Alterman was named the new Editor-in-Chief of Car & Driver, Hachette's …
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The following missive from Jamie and the boys at Motive confirm the online-only magazine will close its doors so the staff can focus on their other sites like VWVortex, Fourtitude, Swedespeed, Mwerks, and Turbonines. It's sad to see a publication that desperately tried to merge the worlds of blogging with forums, but we wish the team luck and hope this "hiatus" ends up being just that.

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We wish you guys all the best.

From Jamie and the rest of the Motive staff:

As many of you know, Motive's Editor-In-Chief Eddie Alterman has left our team to take the position of Editor-In-Chief at Car and Driver magazine. Essentially, Eddie's new job is the equivalent of playing for the Yankees, and hey, we can't blame him. Most of the Motive staff grew up with "old-school" Car and Driver and miss dearly the witty articles, off-the-wall stuff and general "fun" that Car and Driver used to be. Eddie has a unique opportunity to try and bring that "flavor" back to Car and Driver and (with the hopeful support of a French-owned publishing giant) we are anxious to see what he and the rest of the team over there have in store for us.

So that brings us back to Motive. After a lot of soul searching, alcohol, painful deliberation and more (alcohol) we have decided to put Motive on ice for now. With nervous investors, a horrible economy, the loss of Eddie and other factors, the decision, while not an easy one, has become clear. We've had a good ride with Motive and we'll miss it dearly. While we didn't accomplish everything we set out to do, we certainly did accomplish an awful lot, including proving to ourselves and to you that we could do something a little different that was a little more fun and inspiring.

Over the next several weeks we'll be running a few more new car reviews and we'll sprinkle a few "Best of Motive" pieces that are some of our favorites. After that we won't be updating the site regularly, but we will leave it up— there is still a lot of good material there. And don't worry, the discussion forums won't be affected by this in any way - they were here before Motive and will be here after Motive.

Motive introduced us to a lot of new technology and processes, and those are going to be integrated into all of our brand-specific websites (VWVortex, Fourtitude, Swedespeed, Mwerks, and Turbonines, for those of you not in the know.) We will be redesigning all of those websites in the coming months, and you'll definitely see shadows of Motive in the re-designs. We also have plans to launch something entirely new later this summer. I don't want to give away all the details yet, but we think some of you will be excited.

Every one of us that was involved in making Motive happen would like to say thanks to all of you that supported us and those of you whose critiques have pushed us to deliver our best work. The emails, IMs, and private messages of support meant a lot to all of us and we'll miss it. In the mean time we have a lot of cool stuff to work on, and we look forward to giving everyone another update in a few months.